Archive for June, 2017

This week we are featuring an option trading idea based on a stock that just broke out following the Senate healthcare bill. I hope that it is of interest to you.

Terry

Merck Breaks Out, can it Continue to Trade Higher?
Merck, broke out to fresh all-time highs last week following news from the proposed senate bill that would allow for less regulation and would not crack down on drug pricing. The Senate appears to be moving toward a vote, which should keep MRK buoyed.

If you concur with the views expressed by these analysts, consider making this trade which is a bet that MRK will continue to advance (or at least not decline very much) over the next six weeks:

Technicals

After breaking out, prices are consolidating above the recent breakout level. The stock should remain above a downward sloping trend line that shows support near $65. Additional support is seen near the 20-day moving average at $64.33. Momentum has turned positive as the MACD (moving average convergence divergence) index generated a crossover buy signal.

MRK Chart June 2017

*source Stockcharts.com

Buy To Open MRK AUG18 62.50 puts (MRK170818P625
Sell To Open MRK AUG18 65.00 puts (MRK170818P650) for a credit of $0.65 (selling a vertical)

This price was $0.02 less than the mid-point of the option spread when MRK was trading slightly above $66.20. Unless the stock rallies quickly from here, you should be able to get close to this amount.

If you use our favorite broker for this trade, tastyworks, your commission on this trade will only be $2 per spread (and there is no commission on closing trades, only the $.10 clearing fee). Each contract would then yield $63 and your broker would charge a $250 maintenance fee, making your investment $187 ($250 – $63). If MRK closes at any price above $65 on August 18, 2017, both options would expire worthless, and your return on the spread would be 34% (230% annualized).

As with all investments, you should only make option trades with money that you can truly afford to lose.

This week we are looking at another company listed on the Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) Top 50 List. We use this list in our portfolio to find stocks that have been strongly trending higher and this week’s stock is an outperformer which has done exactly that. The Terry’s Tips ’ portfolio that uses this list as its source for underlying ideas is now up 90.3% for the year to date.

The technical outlook for LITE is solid. The stock has been trending higher for over a year and a half and an acceleration of momentum can be seen since the start of May, shortly after the company announced earnings.

The earnings report caused a gap above the 20-day moving average and the stock has held above it since. In addition to the moving average, horizontal support has been identified at $60.50 which held a decline earlier this month.

Lumentum has been consolidating sideways in a range over the past two weeks which is common in strong bullish trends. A break of the upper end of the range, identified at $65.30, is likely to accompany an acceleration to the upside.

Lumentum Chart June 2017

*source Tradingview.com

If you agree there’s further upside ahead for Lumentum, consider this trade which is a bet that the stock will continue to advance, or at least not decline very much over the next four weeks.

Buy To Open LITE 18Augy17 55 Puts (LITE170818P55)
Sell To Open LITE 18Aug17 60 Puts (LITE170818P60) for a credit of $1.73 (selling a vertical)

This price was $0.02 less than the mid-point of the option spread when LITE was trading at $64. Unless the stock rallies quickly from here, you should be able to get close to this amount.

If you use our favorite broker for this trade, tastyworks, your commission on this trade will only be $2 per spread (and there is no commission on closing trades, only the $.10 clearing fee). Each contract would then yield $171 and your broker would charge a $500 maintenance fee, making your investment $329 ($500 – $171). If LITE closes at any price above $60 on August 18, 2017, both options would expire worthless, and your return on the spread would be 52% (312% annualized).

Changes to Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) Top 50 This Week:

IBD Underlying Updates June 23, 2017

IBD Underlying Updates June 23, 2017

We have found that the Investor’s Business Daily Top 50 List has been a reliable source of stocks that are likely to move higher in the short run. As we said above, the Terry’s Tips portfolio which places spreads like the above one has gained 90% in the first six months of 2017 in spite of incurring some losses on some of the spreads placed. Recent additions to the list might be particularly good choices for this strategy, and deletions might be good indicators for exiting a position that you might already have on that stock.

As with all investments, you should only make option trades with money that you can truly afford to lose.

This week we are featuring an option trading idea based on a stock on the IBD Top 50 List that just delivered robust earnings guidance. We have added this spread to the Terry’s Tips portfolio which trades vertical credit put spreads on selected IBD Top 50 companies (this portfolio has gained 77% so far in 2017).

Terry

Is Alibaba (BABA) Ready to Accelerate Higher?

Alibaba, broke out to fresh all-time highs last week following better than expected financial results both on the top and bottom line. Prices have been forming a bull flag pattern which is a pause that refreshes higher.

If you concur with the views expressed by these analysts, consider making this trade which is a bet that BABA will continue to advance (or at least not decline very much) over the next five weeks:

What impressed investors even more than the company’s financial result, was the company’s forward guidance. The Chinese e-commerce giant estimates that revenue will increase almost 50% in the 2018 fiscal year. Analysts had previously estimated a revenue increase of about 35%. In the wake of this news, the average price target was raised to $160 with the highest at $190.

Technicals

After a round of profit taking the stock should resume its climb. The stock price has not closed below its 10-day moving average since February. One way to bet on a further climb would be to put on a bull put credit spread where the short strike was below the 20-day moving average. Support is seen near the 10-day moving average at $136.92.

BABA Chart June 2017

*source Stockcharts.com

Buy To Open BABA 21Jul17 133 puts (BABA170728P133)
Sell To Open BABA 21Jul17 136 puts (BABA170728P136) for a credit of $1.12 (selling a vertical)

This price was $0.03 less than the mid-point of the option spread when BABA was trading slightly above $139. Unless the stock rallies quickly from here, you should be able to get close to this amount.

If you use our favorite broker for this trade, tastyworks, your commission on this trade will only be $2 per contract (and there is no commission on closing trades, only the $.10 clearing fee). Each contract would then yield $110 and your broker would charge a $300 maintenance fee, making your investment $190 ($300 – $110). If BABA closes at any price above $136 on July 28, 2017, both options would expire worthless, and your return on the spread would be 58% (603% annualized).

As with all investments, you should only make option trades with money that you can truly afford to lose.

If you concur with the views expressed by these analysts, consider making this trade which is a bet that ANET will continue to advance (or at least not decline very much) over the next five weeks:

Buy To Open ANET 21Jul17 145 puts (ANET170721P145)

Sell To Open ANET 21Jul17 150 puts (ANET170721P150) for a credit of $1.80 (selling a vertical)

This price was $0.02 less than the mid-point of the option spread when ANET was trading slightly above $150. Unless the stock rallies quickly from here, you should be able to get close to this amount.

If you use our favorite broker for this trade, tastyworks, your commission on this trade will only be $2 per contract (and there is no commission on closing trades, only the $.10 clearing fee). Each contract would then yield $178 and your broker would charge a $500 maintenance fee, making your investment $322 ($500 – $178). If ANET closes at any price above $150 on July 17, 2017, both options would expire worthless, and your return on the spread would be 55% (572% annualized).

Changes to Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) Top 50 This Week:

IBD Underlying Updates June 19, 2017

IBD Underlying Updates June 16, 2017

We have found that the Investor’s Business Daily Top 50 List has been a reliable source of stocks that are likely to move higher in the short run. The Terry’s Tips portfolio which places spreads like the above one has gained 76% in the first five months of 2017 in spite of incurring some losses on some of the spreads placed. Recent additions to the list might be particularly good choices for this strategy, and deletions might be good indicators for exiting a position that you might already have on that stock.

As with all investments, you should only make option trades with money that you can truly afford to lose.

This week we are discussing another of Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) Top 50 List companies. In one of our portfolios, we use this list to find stocks which have displayed a strong upward momentum, and we place spreads which will profit if the upward momentum continues for about six more weeks. Actually, the stock can even fall a little for the maximum gain to be made on these spreads.

If you agree with these analysts, you might consider making this trade which is a bet that NVDA will continue its upward momentum (or at least not decline very much) over the next six weeks:

Buy To Open NVDA 21Jul17 140 puts (NVDA170717P140)

Sell To Open NVDA 21Jul17 145 puts (NVDA170717P145) for a credit of $2.30 (selling a vertical)

This price was $.02 less than the mid-point of the option spread when NVDA was trading just below $150. You should be able to get close to this amount unless the stock moves quickly higher. (In my personal account, I sold this spread on Monday for $2.33).

If you use our favorite broker for this trade, tastyworks, your commission on this trade will only be $2 per contract (and there is no commission on closing trades, only the $.10 clearing fee). Each contract would then yield $228 and your broker would charge a $500 maintenance fee, making your investment $272 ($500 – $228). If NVDA closes at any price above $145 on July 17, 2017, both options would expire worthless, and your return on the spread would be 83% (586% annualized).

Changes to Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) Top 50 This Week:

IBD Underlying Updates June 12, 2017

We have found that the Investor’s Business Daily Top 50 List has been a reliable source of stocks that are likely to move higher in the short run. The Terry’s Tips portfolio which places spreads like the above one has gained 76% in the first five months of 2017 in spite of incurring some losses on some of the spreads placed. Recent additions to the list might be particularly good choices for this strategy, and deletions might be good indicators for exiting a position that you might already have on that stock.

As with all investments, you should only make option trades with money that you can truly afford to lose.

For the first time ever, I will share with you the exact strategy we use in one of the 9 portfolios we carry out at Terry’s Tips. I will reveal the exact positions we have in this portfolio, their original cost, and our reasoning for putting them on. This portfolio started out with $3000 at the beginning of 2017, and has gained 83% so far. It is not our best performing portfolio, but it exceeds the average 2017 gain of 51.7% for all 9 portfolios.

Terry

Actual Positions in One Terry’s Tips Portfolio

Our Honey Badger portfolio is one of our most aggressive (least conservative). Our strategy is to select companies which rank high on the Investor’s Business Daily Top 50 List, and make the assumption that these high-momentum stocks will continue to be strong for another six or ten weeks. The stocks don’t actually have to go up at all for us to make the maximum gain on the spreads we place. We select strike prices which are just below the then-current stock price so we can tolerate a small drop in the price while we hold the positions.

Here are the exact words we published in our June 3, 2017 Saturday Report which reviews performance of all nine portfolios:

Summary of Honey BadgerPortfolioThis portfolio started with $3000 in early January 2017. It will be our most aggressive portfolio. We will select companies from Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) highest-ranked momentum list (The Top 50) and sell vertical put credit spreads betting that the momentum will last at least another 2 months or so. In 2017, we have had profitable trades with NVDA, HQY, AMAT, ANET, and ULTA, and suffered a big loss on GS which fell by $30 after we placed the trade.

Current positions:

On May 8 when LRCX was trading at $152:
Buy To Open (BTO) 3 LRCX 16Jun17 145 puts (LRCX170616P145)
Sell To Open (STO) 3 LRCX 16Jun17 150 puts (LRCX170616P150) for a credit of $1.90 (selling a vertical)
If LRCX ends up above $150 on June 16, this spread will gain $562.50 after commissions on an investment of $937.50, or 60% (360% annualized)

On May 11 when AVGO was trading at $230:

BTO 4 AVGO 23Jun17 220 puts (AVGO170623P220)

STO 4 AVGO 23Jun17 225 puts (AVGO170623P225) for a credit of $1.62 (selling a vertical) If ULTA ends up above $225 on June 23, this spread will gain $638 after commissions on an investment of $1362, or 47% (281% annualized)

If ULTA ends up above $295 on June 17, this spread will gain $750 after commissions on an investment of $1250, or 60% (360% annualized)

Honey Badger Portfolio Positions June 2017

Results for the week: With AVGO (at $254.53) up $13.32 (5.5%), LRCX (at $158.74) up $3.62 (2.3%) and ULTA (at $311.47) up $9.07 (3.0%), for the week, the portfolio gained $810 or 17.3%. The big gain this week came about because of the surge in AVGO which makes the spread almost certain to make the maximum gain when it expires in three weeks. All three stocks in this portfolio are comfortably above the price then need to be to achieve the maximum gain. If they remain above the strike of the option we have sold, we will pick up another $180 in 3 weeks. This will make the gain for the first six months of the year a nice 88% (after commissions, of course).

Since the IBD Top 50 list is such an important source for this portfolio, we keep a careful watch on the stocks which are added on to the list each week and which ones are deleted. Over time, we hope to determine whether deletions might be good prospects for bearish spreads. Momentum often works in both directions, and perhaps stocks which had strong upward momentum will have strong downward momentum when IBD determines that the upward trend has ended.

Here are the changes we reported to our subscribers this week:

Changes to Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) Top 50 This Week:

IBD Underlying Updates June 2017

We hope you enjoyed this peek at one of our portfolios, and the strategy we use in this portfolio. While we know that lots of newsletters out there are making all sorts of great promises about how wonderful their performance is, we don’t know of a single one which will reveal all their trades and is doing anywhere near what we have done. Our results include all commissions as well (most newsletters conveniently ignore commissions to make their results look better). We invite you to come on board and share in our success.

Success Stories

I have been trading the equity markets with many different strategies for over 40 years. Terry Allen's strategies have been the most consistent money makers for me. I used them during the 2008 melt-down, to earn over 50% annualized return, while all my neighbors were crying about their losses.

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tastyworks, Inc. and Terry’s Tips are separate, unaffiliated companies and are not responsible for each other’s services and products. Options are not suitable for all investors as the special risks inherent to options trading my expose investors to potentially rapid and substantial losses. Options trading in a tastyworks account is subject to tastyworks’ review and approval. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before investing in options